Coasting through the Cape

With Eid Ul Fitr and the complimentary bank holiday, I was presented with a three day weekend for the first time since arriving in Ghana. So what better way to spend it than to travel to the (in)famous Cape Coast. Famously known as the home to Kofi Annan, and the ancestral home to Michelle Obama, it also boasts the Cape Coast Castle, infamously known for being a critical trading center during the slave trade.

The Fellows and I set off for Cape Coast on Friday, at sunrise, with the notion that the intercity bus ride would afford us a few additional hours of sleep. What we did not anticipate was the Ghanaian approach to mass transit. After paying our fare and boarding the bus, we took our seats and shut our eyes, only to be awakened (or Awakened, depending on how one looks at it) by a traveling preacher.

Since he was preaching in Twi, the local dialect, a language for which I can cogently only decipher select phrases such as what’s up? and thank you, my initial inclination was to believe that mayhap he was giving us a safety presentation. As it turns out, he was simply preaching. Defeated in my attempt to nap, the rest of the bus attentively hung to his every word, laughed at his jokes (which I came to find out later from our Ghanaian colleague, were using us as the punch line!), and even worshiped together in song. The sermon concluded near the end of our transport, where the preacher pulled out some over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs and peddled them off to the eager consumer. By the time I stepped off the bus, I was not only exhausted but was entirely disillusioned by this exploitation of religion for personal financial advancement. Ironically, the anti-inflammatory drugs might have served me well right about then.

Between stops at some seaside resorts and a side-excursion to Kakum National Park for an adventurous canopy walk, stories for another time and place (place being defined as stationary, not transitory) we soon again found ourselves in need of transportation. Having spent the better part of an hour waiting for hauling, we befriended a local university’s campus Christians who happened to have a chartered bus and happened to be travelling in our same direction. They generously opened their bus doors and allowed us to stand in the aisle. After a quick opening prayer, we (we being loosely defined) proceeded to worship using a video that spliced together various hymns recorded in the 1980s. The only one I recognized was You Raise Me Up, to which I had difficulty relating after my first church-on-the-go.

One thing is certain; my weekend in and around Cape Coast raised my understanding of travelling church to a whole new level.